West Midlands Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Bits from Abroad

July 2016

North Korea has deployed an intermediate-range ballistic missile to its east coast although there are no signs it’s ready for launch, a South Korean government source said recently. “We have detected signs that the North has deployed what appears to be a Musudan missile,” the source said on the condition of anonymity. A South Korean military official said the military is closely watching the situation. Earlier, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported the North is preparing to fire a missile.

USA: A State Department official deliberately cut several minutes of videotape from a news briefing dealing with sensitive questions about U.S.- Iranian nuclear negotiations before posting the footage to its website and YouTube, the agency said in June. In the Dec. 2, 2013, briefing, a reporter asked about the department’s denial earlier that year of secret talks between Washington and Tehran. Those discussions had been periodically occurring and eventually led to a breakthrough, seven-nation nuclear deal.

USA: This summer, Congress has been tying itself up in knots, trying to decide how to adequately fund U.S. national defense priorities, given the limits imposed by sequestration. But the difficult reality is that, however we choose to address immediate challenges, any rational attempt to plan for America’s future security must begin with a clear-eyed reassessment of the costs, trade-offs, and dangers of the trillion-dollar plan Washington is undertaking to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. That reassessment should include an effort to eliminate the new nuclear cruise missile.